She, Myself, and I Page 6

  I hesitate. Is this the sting? He wants a sample of the donor’s voice, so he can take it back as proof of life after death? Despite the sun, I suddenly feel cold.

  “I can write it down,” he says, “if you don’t want to be recorded.”

  “I don’t think I want to be recorded.”

  He opens up his bag and slips his phone inside. “Can I ask you not to talk too fast?”

  “Okay.”

  “Okay.” He pulls out a black notebook and a black pen. The notebook’s held closed with a red elastic band. He removes it and flicks to a fresh page, which flutters a little in the breeze. “Can I start with your name?”

  “Is that how you know what all the plaques say?” I ask. “Because you do these interviews?”

  “Denise and Matt?”

  “Yeah.”

  He nods.

  “There must be twenty benches in this park.”

  “Twenty-two.”

  “There must be hundreds of benches in this city. Thousands of benches.”

  His eyebrows furrow. “I guess.”

  “You know every inscription? If I gave you a park, I don’t know, that one in town where all the revolutionaries are buried and said fourth bench in from the gate on the left, could you tell me what it says?” I’m babbling. I’m nervous. I don’t want him to go. But I cannot be interviewed.

  “I come to this park most lunchtimes. Not all the benches in Boston have inscriptions.” His voice is low. He realizes he’s under some kind of suspicion.

  “Don’t they? All the ones I see do.”

  “I guess you don’t get out that much.”

  The way he says this isn’t unpleasant exactly. But it’s firm. And something in me recoils. I get up. I register surprise in his eyes. To be honest, I’m surprised myself.

  He blinks. “You don’t want to do the interview?”

  I’m so tense now I can hardly move. I think of Mum and how stiff she gets. Like mother, like Frankenstein’s daughter. “I guess you could just make it up.”

  “Why would I do that?”

  “I don’t know. Don’t journalists ever make up interviews?”

  “Not any that I know. And why would I even want to when there’s someone right in front of me I really want to interview?”

  My nails dig into my palms enough to hurt. I’m out of my depth. A minute ago, he was insulting me. Now? Is he flirting? I glance at the next bench. A friendly-looking nurse is sitting there with a salad box and a Redbook magazine. “You could interview her.”

  “I don’t want to interview her.”

  “I’m sure she’d have some really interesting things to say about the issues of the day.”

  “I think you have more interesting things to say.”

  “Unlikely if I don’t get out that much.” I want to look anywhere but at him and this park, and the only place left is up.

  A gull swoops past, and you know what I think? Is it real? Is it remote-controlled? Is there a camera on its wing?

  But why bother with that? His phone is still recording, isn’t it? There’s a camera in his pocket, or his bag. Or in his notepad. Or in the tip of his pen. I think you have more interesting things to say. How unveiled can you get? What was I thinking? I just wanted some air. I just wanted to get out, to prove to myself that I wasn’t a prisoner, and what have I got myself into?

  I thought I was reasonably self-controlled, but my gaze searches for the security of the hospital, and I break into a lopsided jog, my weaker leg dragging.

  Eyes swivel to me. I almost collide with a woman walking a dog. A shark-toothed terrier. It looks like it’d tear me apart if she let it. Her expression suggests she wouldn’t be disinclined. A couple of nurses laughing over something on a phone stop to let me pass. As soon as I clear them, a woman in her fifties, wearing a tartan dress and sandals, steps out from under a tree and proffers a pamphlet. I don’t look at it. She fixes her gaze on me. There’s something in her storm-gray eyes, a kind of startled curiosity, that makes me want to run.

  It takes all my remaining strength not to sprint inside. I keep the tears in check all the way to the elevator and up to my corridor. Jared’s there, leaving his room. He pulls out his earbuds.

  “Rosa?”

  But I ignore him. I stumble into my room, fall on my bed, and let my chest heave.

  Talking to a boy? Walking out in the world? Pretending to be normal? Thinking for one second my life could be just like anyone else’s? What was I thinking? Does he—Joe Tyler—does he know? I have no idea. What was I thinking?

  I stay like this, facedown on my bed, for more than an hour. When I finally get up, I go over to the wardrobe and open the door to reveal the full-length mirror on the inside. I make an inspection. My left cheek is creased from being pressed into crumpled bedding. My hair is damp. My cheeks are puffy. And, I notice, in the background of this depressing scene, something has been pushed under my door.

  I retrieve it. It’s a piece of paper, folded three times. While I was lost in self-pity, someone must have slipped it through. I expect it was Jared. Last week, he left a note inviting me to watch The Matrix—“I know what you said about sci-fi, but this could be actual reality”; I politely declined. But then I see this, in black scrawl on the front:

  To the dark-haired girl who was wearing a white vest and blue jeans and who was in the park at 12:16, and who I think must be at this hospital and whose name might be Rosa but I’m not sure I heard properly. Other salient features: porcelain skin; kind of defensive, and I don’t blame her, because I was rude, and I would really appreciate it if you would get this to her.

  My hands are trembling as I open the note. Inside, in what on reflection I decide is a neat counterpoint to the rambling message on the front, he’s written:

  I’m sorry. Joe.

  11.

  Sometimes I wonder what it would have been like to be me thirty years ago, before the rise of the internet. Stuck in a chair, fitted with a colostomy bag, unable ever to escape other people’s assumptions and judgments.

  Online, I was free. Feeling equal to the people I messaged—knowing that they perceived me as an equal—was a revelation. My self-esteem soared. At least, while I was online.

  Well, most of the time. There was one boy I used to message quite a lot, until I got the details of a concert by a Brighton band that Elliot had told me about all wrong, and the boy realized I hadn’t gone to the concert and branded me a fake. (I cried into my pillow all that night. And the next. And the next . . .)

  But real entanglement with real boys? I have to go back to elementary school, and Idris Hudson. He had huge brown eyes. I remember holding hands on the playground and scrawling him notes covered in hearts. This went on for two years. We were going to get married and have a baby called Ellie. Until he realized girls were disgusting. Then I went and developed a terminal nerve disease and we never saw each other again.

  But this body? There must have been boys who had crushes on Sylvia. Her lips must have kissed theirs. Her hands must have touched their chests. They must have touched her. She was eighteen years old.

  Joe sent me this note. Is he interested? Could he be? If he is, it’s surely because of this body—not because of anything to do with me. But I guess this is the kind of problem that applies to regular people, too.

  He said he often comes to the hospital park at lunchtime, and Dr. Monzales has already sanctioned it, so Jane can give me all the fake-concerned, critical looks she likes—I’m going back there tomorrow.

  I wash my face, smooth on some moisturizer—which doesn’t quite make the creases go away, but helps—and change into a fresh pair of jeans and my favorite top: a soft blue, with stars. I don’t want to be here alone. The recreation room’s rarely empty. Maybe I’ll find Jess and tell her about Joe. Not the journalist part. The “is it weird to kind of like someone who was basically rude to me?” part. But perhaps it would be better to keep him to myself.

  Just as I’m about to leave, there’s a knoc
k.

  Mum. I hadn’t expected to see her till six. She’s in one of her white coats, and she looks pale. “Where are you going?”

  “Hi,” I say, a little surprised. “The rec room.”

  “No, you have to come.” Her voice is taut.

  “Where?”

  She hesitates. “I don’t want you to worry—it’s nothing to worry about; it’s just a precaution—”

  “Mum.”

  “It’s just the scan from this morning. It’s nothing to worry about,” she says. “It looks normal to me. But Dr. Joshi thinks the left prefrontal cortex, the—” She interrupts herself. “Look, it’s okay. I just want you to come back, have another scan, in the suite.”

  I’m staring at her. The scans are always fine. “When?”

  She raises an eyebrow. “Oh, next week. Whenever suits.”

  I don’t miss the sarcasm in her tone.

  As soon as we reach the scanning suite, they rush me in, and there are white-toothed smiles galore, which suggests to me that perhaps I should panic.

  Dr. Monzales is there. He looks calm. But there’s no small talk. As soon as I’m down on one of the black leather chairs, he slips an electrode cap on my head, and he, Mum, and Dr. Joshi, the chief neurologist, peer at the monitor on the desk.

  Dr. Monzales’s fingers flicker across a keyboard. Scientific sonatas. Or a death march? Is that what he’s playing? He asks me questions: “What’s your name?” “What’s the quickest way to get from your room to the café?” “If you could change anything about your room, what would you change?” “How do you feel when you switch off the light at night?”

  He views my multicolored brain from a variety of computer-generated angles. At last, he says, “Everything looks normal.”

  Dr. Joshi nods.

  Mum releases a sigh that could fill a hot air balloon. She helps me remove the cap and kisses me on the cheek. Her lips are warm. “See you at six.”

  “Okay, Mum.”

  She smiles—a real smile. Dr. Monzales, too.

  By now it’s quarter to four. I’m hot. My hands are sweaty. There are dark smears of the gel that they use on the electrodes on my top. I don’t want to go to the rec room like this. So I head back to my room and take a too-hot shower, hoping to wash out some of my bad mood.

  The towel secured under my arms, I go to my laptop to message Elliot and find a picture from AikaA, my friend in Tokyo, of a Persian kitten dressed as a Roman charioteer, a soft toy mouse harnessed to its cardboard chariot.

  She’s online right now. And she’s in Japan. I can safely tell her about Joe.

  I message her: So I met this guy.

  Who??? What’s he like? Send picture.

  I write: Don’t have a picture. He’s—

  And I think—what is he like? Why do I like him?

  Is it just that he’s the first boy I’ve met outside the hospital, in this body?

  He was rude. But I’m used to Elliot. I don’t mind rude. In some ways, I even quite like it. (And he did apologize.) It’s more interesting than nice. But there’s something else: Unlike Dmitri, unlike Jared, unlike anyone I think I’ve ever met apart from Elliot, and maybe Dr. Monzales, he seems to have this kind of granite self-confidence. It’s appealing. Well, it is to me.

  I type: Serious. Kind of intense.

  She replies: Noooo!

  I smile. What’s wrong with intense?

  Everything!! Find warm funny genuine kind boy!

  I write: Oh no problem. Literally hundreds around to choose from.

  She replies: Ha ha. Got to get to class.

  Now what? Actually, I don’t want to talk to Elliot right now. And I don’t want to hang out in the rec room. There’s an energy in my body. I need to move.

  I ditch the towel, dig out some underwear, and pull on a pair of jeans and one of the T-shirts Elliot gave me (it says HOW THE HORSES FEARED—no idea what it means). My skin still damp with shower water and sweat, I take the stairs down, using the wall to help keep me steady. I detour through the near-empty gym and shove open that glass door.

  I know: It’s not right after my study session.

  But I want to be outside.

  For a few moments, I just stand there.

  The breeze and the intensity of even the rapidly fading light reprise their roles as sources of near-spiritual wonder. I close my eyes and let that light burn away all thoughts of Mum and Dr. Monzales, Jane and Joe.

  I listen to the chirrup of birds in the trees, the blood in my ears, the excited squeals of a kid in the dim, far distance. When I finally open my eyes, my retinas are scorched.

  I blink. Gradually, pixel by glimmering pixel, I make out the trees and the benches, which are occupied only by two elderly men with metal canes. Then my brain registers motion to the far right of my visual field. I turn slightly to focus on it. It stops. It is a woman. She’s over by the more densely planted region of the park, an area thick with bushes and reddening trees, fiddling with a wad of leaflets, turning from someone in the shadows who’s walking away.

  I recognize her: the woman from yesterday. The woman in the tartan dress. Only now she’s wearing a baggy blouse and a long purple skirt. She has gray hair tied in a messy ponytail. A chunky silver necklace. She was watching me then. She’s watching me now. I think: Maybe she likes women and allegedly I’m cute—and then all thoughts come to a train crash of a stop.

  “Hey! Rosa?”

  My heart hammering, I turn toward the voice. He says:

  “It is you.”

  12.

  Joe’s still wearing the jeans, the gray shirt, the bag over his shoulder. I must be just taking him in, I guess, viewing him, like an exhibit, the way I’ve viewed boys for so long—not to interact with, Do Not Touch—rather than looking appropriately forgiving, because he says, “You got my note?”

  He asked a question. It requires a response. “Yeah.”

  “The receptionist looked at me like I was trying to smuggle MDMA or something in the paper.”

  I nod, finally allowing myself to meet his gaze. There’s so much light in the blue of his eyes. Like sun on sea. My heart racing, I say, “She has this crack-smuggling look for the people she really doesn’t like.”

  “Okay.” A pause. “Good.”

  He smiles, and with it, the rest of the world melts into action.

  The park is a lot quieter than at lunchtimes, but a few people are around. As well as that woman, still fiddling with her wad of leaflets, there’s a youngish couple in leather jackets intertwined on a stars-and-stripes picnic blanket under one of the trees. The breeze has dropped, and the air is thicker now with the scent of salt from the harbor, tinged with the odor of decaying leaves. Eau de Dixon-Dudley Park.

  One of the elderly men heaves himself up from his bench. Joe notices him. He opens his mouth a little. Hesitates.

  I say, “You were about to tell me what it says on the plaque.”

  “Then it occurred to me that knowing all the inscriptions on all the memorial plaques on all the benches in a park might not be on the all-time list of ways to impress a girl.”

  He wants to impress me? “There are better ways?”

  “I guess I could give you my views on the issues of the day. Issue number one: As someone who has just spent close to four hours here, I can tell you there aren’t anywhere near enough nurses eating noodles in this park. Or irritating doctors chucking footballs. The lack of irritating doctors chucking footballs in Dixon-Dudley Memorial Park is an issue I’ll be raising in my next editorial meeting.”

  I smile slightly. “Four hours?”

  “I sat down with this man. Then it was hard to get away. He wanted me to talk to his family. He brought them all out from the hospital, one by one. His mother, his sister, his brother-in-law, his son. I asked him to tell me about his life. He opened up. I didn’t want to say, ‘Actually, that’s enough now.’ They just went back inside. Then I saw you. About before, I am sorry.”

  I shrug in a way that’s meant to s
uggest it’s okay, not that I’m shrugging off the apology. And I think, Someone who waits hours rather than offend someone who’s baring his life is the opposite of rude.

  Then he says, “If you’ll accept that, can I interview you?”

  I glance back behind me. Someone’s opening the gym blinds. I walk away from the door, into the park. Joe walks with me.

  “To go on Bostonstream?” I ask.

  “Maybe.”

  “Maybe?”

  “I write stuff. They decide what they publish.”

  Hedging, delaying, and also because I’m curious, I ask, “Who’s the most interesting person you’ve ever interviewed?”

  “Most interesting?” We’re by one of the cedars. He stops and seems to really think. Then he says, “Seven weeks ago, I sat down in this park next to a man who’d escaped North Korea with his mother over the mountains of Laos.” He looks down at the grass around his feet. Takes a breath. “Actually. Interesting? I don’t know what you’ll think is interesting. I sat next to this girl. About our age.”

  He glances at me, then his gaze flicks back to the ground. For a long time, in conversational norms, he doesn’t speak. I’m beginning to think he isn’t going to, then he says: “Her mother was here, in critical care. She was in the last stages of leukemia and she’d gotten pneumonia. But she’d made it through the night, and she was doing better. The doctors said she was going to recover. From the pneumonia. The girl took fentanyl from the emergency drug tray. She injected it into a vein in the mother’s neck. She killed her.”

  My brain reels. “The girl killed her mother?”

  “She saw her chance.”

  “Did the mother want—”

  “The mother had asked the girl’s father to do it. He hadn’t been able to.”

  “He hadn’t been able to get drugs—”

  “He hadn’t been able to do it.”

  “What happened to the girl?” I ask.

  “She was sitting here, waiting to be arrested.”

  “Was she arrested?”

  “I guess so. Maybe not that day. Maybe what she’d done didn’t come out till the autopsy.”